A tool for in between
Check-In Compass
Three quick readings on where you are. Less time than the kettle takes.
Most of a life moves on an ordinary Tuesday, in the stretch between sessions, while you carry on being the capable one. Check-In Compass keeps you company there: a private space to notice where you are in the body, in the mind, and underneath whatever mood is doing the talking.
Ask someone how their day was and they reach for the nearest word, usually fine. Check-In Compass offers a slower route. You choose a general zone first, then the word inside it that fits. Each word comes with a plain definition, so restless and settled mean exactly what they say. The same two questions, asked three times: what is this, and what might sit behind it.
What it's for
A noticing practice
This belongs to you. Nothing you write here reaches me unless you choose to bring it to a session. Think of it as a private notebook that asks better questions than most notebooks manage. It keeps what you tell it, so a week or a season can be read back, rather than reconstructed from memory, a famously unreliable narrator.
I may suggest a rhythm: a check-in before we meet, or one at the start and end of the day. What you do with the suggestion stays yours to decide.
How it works
A few minutes, three realms
Step 1
Note the context
What you are doing, who you are with, where you are. Asked once, it carries through all three realms, so the question never repeats itself.
Step 2
Choose a zone
A general read on where you are, starting with the body: charged or depleted, braced or released.
Step 3
Find the word
A specific word from inside that zone, with a one-line definition. It sits closer to what you mean than fine or tired ever manages.
Step 4
Say why, if you want to
An optional line on what might be behind it. Skip it freely, the reading holds either way.
Step 5
Read it back
When all three realms are done, the whole reading sits together, timestamped, ready for whenever you want to look back.
Your entries stay on your own device, for as long as you choose to keep them. Nothing is sent anywhere, including to me.
Worth knowing
A few practical things
Add it to your phone's home screen and it opens like any other app, full screen, with no browser bar. Once installed, it works without signal, so a check-in on a train or a walk with patchy coverage logs exactly as it would at your desk.
Check in as often as the day calls for. One full pass, body, mind, mood, completes a reading, and then another can begin.
Opens in this browser, with an option to add it to your home screen.